A Day at the Fair

Following up on yesterday’s post about meeting Dean Koontz (via Margaret Atwood’s remarkable LongPen device), I thought it would be useful and interesting to share some more impressions from my first day at this week’s London Book Fair (LBF).

I arrived during a sweltering midday at the Earls Court Exhibition Centre in West London. The hall (where I once saw Pink Floyd perform) was heaving with people--booksellers, book buyers, authors, reviewers, and so forth. Fortunately, I had pre-registered for this event, so all I had to do to get in the door was allow my lapel badge to be scanned. For a moment after that, I just stood and observed the mammoth throng with awe. The LBF long ago outgrew its original venue, London’s Olympia center; last year, it had to regroup at the ExCeL Exhibition Centre in the Docklands, but that site wasn’t popular--hence, its move to Earls Court. A far superior venue, according to attendees.

My first act was to do a scout around the hall’s main floor, check out where all of the publisher stands were located. I had no trouble spotting the French Hachette Livre companies (Hodder Headline, Hodder & Stoughton, Orion, and Little, Brown), as well as their non-Gallic rivals, including Random House, Faber and Faber, Penguin, HarperCollins, Canongate, No Exit Press, and the dynamic new house, Quercus. I visited all of their stands, to see what treats might be found in their catalogues of upcoming works. This also gave me a chance to chat with some of the publishers’ reps. I was most happy to speak with Suzannah Rich, from Peter Mayer’s Duckworth, who showed me the cover art from that house’s edition of Robert Littell’s 2006 novel, Vicious Circle, which I think looks good, and somewhat less brutal than the American cover. Rich also mentioned that Duckworth will be publishing Charles McCarry’s latest suspenser, Christopher’s Ghosts, next month. (Mark your calendars.) From there, I wandered over to the No Exit Press stand to meet Ion Mills. We laughed again about my unintended appearance (as a, well, “sex god”) in Gangsters Wives, but he still wouldn’t tell me who the pseudonymous author “Lee Martin” really is. He did, though, mention that Martin is writing a sequel. There is no telling what further damage that might do to my reputation.

After No Exit Press, I visited with the Mira Books folks, who publish M.J. Rose and Alex Kava, and are bringing out Paul Johnston’s new standalone novel, The Death List, in June. Then, with my colleague Karen Meek from the Euro Crime blog, I took in a seminar called “All About Evil: Noir Fiction.” Chaired by The New York Review of Books’ Edwin Frank, this panel discussion included John Banville, author (under the nom de plume “Benjamin Black”) of Christine Falls, and Christopher Priest (The Prestige). It was a fascinating discussion, with the panel agreeing that what’s thought of as evil in real life can actually be downright banal--not premeditated, and therefore quite boring. Hence, novelists manufacture elaborate events intended to highlight evil, but that could only happen in fiction. (Priest observed that even the one murderer he’d met turned out to be uninteresting, as well.) Banville went on to point out that often, people seen by others to be evil do not consider themselves as such; instead, they may believe they are endeavoring to improve the world in some manner. So evil becomes a point of view, rather than an absolute. Now, that’s frightening.

(Click here to see a short clip of Banville speaking on this panel.)

Afterwards, Karen trod off to meet a friend for drinks, while I went for some lunch with literary agent Teresa Chris, only to bump into crime novelist Sheila Quigley (Every Breath You Take) and her agent, Julia Churchill of Darley Anderson. Then it was away to the Theakston’s Harrogate Cocktail Party. Organizers there were in fine form, and expressed excitement over this summer’s Harrogate Crime Writing Festival program. My only quibble with the schedule, is that it follows by only a few days this year’s ThrillerFest in New York City. It might be tight, trying to squeeze Harrogate in amongst my family and work commitments. Shots editor Mike Stotter and I have given thought to attending on Saturday only, rather than participating over the full weekend, as we have in previous years. (Harrogate has given me much joy in the past, so it will be a disappointment to attend just one day in July.)

In any event, this cocktail party was extremely well attended, allowing me to mix with such notable authors as Mike Ripley, Laura Wilson, Mark Timlin, Peter James, and Natasha Cooper. I got in a few words, too, with publishing luminaries such as Jon Wood of Orion, Kate Lyall-Grant from Simon & Schuster, Thalia Proctor of Little, Brown, and the witty raconteur Paul Blezzard of Oneword Radio. But I was surprised to spot renowned critic, bookseller, publisher, and editor Otto Penzler arriving at this fête dressed in a dapper suit and a tie covered in book jackets--how apt. As I had never before met this major figure in the U.S. crime-fiction world--who, I’d only just read in The Bookseller, was instrumental in Quercus buying Thomas H. Cook’s Red Leaves--I was happy to spend a half hour with Penzler, chatting about books.

Not only did he and I agree on Cook’s quality of writing, but we were both astounded that Red Leaves hadn’t won last year’s Duncan Lawrie Dagger Award. We had to keep our voices low on this subject, though, as we noticed that Ann Cleeves--whose Raven Black beat Cook’s novel for that particular commendation--had joined this party. Regardless, we toasted Thomas H. Cook’s work, before Mike Ripley showed up to steal away his attention. (Penzler and Ripley are shown at right.)

I resumed my mingling, at one point speaking with the delightful Natasha Cooper (née Daphne Wright), who has secured Frederick Forsyth’s appearance at the Harrogate festival, which is remarkable because he doesn’t do many public events. And then Simon Theakston, the managing director of North Yorkshire’s Theakston Brewery, famous for its Old Peculier beer (the name describing how you feel after drinking a lot of it), took to the podium and welcomed us all. He went on to announce that his company has agreed to sponsor the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival for the long term--wonderful news, as Harrogate has turned into one of the premier events of its kind. This announcement provoked a big cheer from the assemblage.

After a bit more socializing (I am nothing, if not gregarious), I decided to call it a night, still warmed by my memories of talking with Dean Koontz and confident of meeting other people, as LBF progressed, who love books every bit as much as I do.

The LongPen Is Mightier Than ...

Many of you probably remember what a huge charge I got last year out of meeting Stephen King, after I’d read so much of his work as a teenager. Well, another American author I thought I’d never encounter was suspense novelist Dean Koontz, who is notorious for hating air travel, seldom leaves his abode in Newport Beach, California, south of Los Angeles, and has never--not one time--visited my homeland, England. The popularity of Koontz’s books is so huge these days, that a conventional signing would probably be impractical, anyway.

But my grudging acceptance of what seemed the inevitable--that I would never come face to face with Koontz--was thrown over completely yesterday, during the annual London Book Fair (LBF). How did this happen, you ask? By what means was I finally able to chat with Koontz, short of packing my bags and flying all the way to California? Well, it was thanks to Canadian writer Margaret Atwood and her mighty LongPen.

A few brief notes, though, before we proceed, just by way of recapping my love affair with Koontz’s writing. I’ve read his work ever since he started out publishing science-fiction yarns, such as Time Thieves (1977), and moved on from there to compose suspense fiction tinged with surreal, horror, and SF elements. I have always admired his workman-like writing ethic and his consistent ability to turn out readable, addictive fiction that provokes thought and fires the imagination. My early favorites from Koontz’s oeuvre were Twilight Eyes, Strangers, Lightning, and then his big breakthrough book, 1987’s Watchers. I was enamored, too, of the melodramatic stories he originally published under the pseudonym “Leigh Nichols” (Shadow Fires, etc.), and I have since collected those books and others he had published under a variety of noms de plume, in addition to his more recent bestsellers.

Koontz is often dismissed as a genre author. But in my opinion, he’s the sort of professional that other authors wish they could be, churning out addictive thrillers one right after the next.

So, anyway, back to the London Book Fair.

After a hard day spent networking stand by stand, meeting colleagues, chatting and listening to publishers’ reps and book reviewers in hopes of figuring out which forthcoming titles might be worth reading, and which to give a pass, I finally retired for lunch at a nearby bar. A cold beer and a hot salt beef sandwich went down easy, and they refreshed me enough to take a short walk. During which I quite literally bumped into Margaret Atwood.

This is one of the wonderful aspects of attending the LBF--that everyone who is anyone in Britain’s book-publishing community, or who can swing the necessary travel expenses from their North American publishers to make the trip across “the pond,” attends this three-day celebration of modern literature’s commercial side. You never know who you’re going to run across on any given day. Even someone of Atwood’s caliber.

As you might expect, I promptly launched into praise of her many books, especially her dystopian science-fiction novel, The Handmaid’s Tale (1985), which captured the prestigious Arthur C. Clarke Award. She must have found me passably interesting, because she told me to follow her, that she had a real treat to share with me. Who was I to argue with one of our greatest living writers? I tagged along to the LongPen stand.

On a board placed to one side of the stand I read the following: “Dean Koontz Signs from Newport Beach, L.A.” at 1530 hours. And central to that display was a giant video monitor, an essential part of what has been described as “the world’s first long-distance, real-time, real pen and ink autographing device operated over the Internet.” Atwood told me that she had come up with the LongPen to assist authors, publishers, and readers in getting books publicized and signed, without generating all the carbon dioxide that’s created by global travel. (We do live in pretty environmentally conscious times, after all.) She estimated that Koontz signing remotely would prevent the creation of 2.52 tons of carbon dioxide, and added that LongPen is especially attractive in places such as Australia, New Zealand, and India. However, she conceded that it would likely not replace book signings altogether; it’s just an alternative.

Having seen Koontz’s name on the board (along with those of Andrew Gross and Marilyn French, who’d both be signing from New York, and Mark Haddon in Toronto), I naturally mentioned to her my longstanding fondness for his prose. So, as her LongPen assistants were gearing up for Koontz’s virtual appearance at this fair, they thrust a copy of his latest novel, The Husband, into my hands and nudged me toward their stand. Atwood just smiled mischievously at me, like a magician showing a caveman fire.

Suddenly, there I was in London, talking in real time with Dean Koontz, who was seated comfortably in his home in Southern California! After a moment’s hesitation (it’s not every day you get to meet somebody you so admire), I asked him why he has never ventured over to the UK. He said that the sheer volume of writing he has on never allows him much time to travel away from his desk. When I told him that I have been reading his work ever since I was a teenager, he said that made him feel old; so I quickly reassured him that, even at age 61, he looks younger than I do (thanks, in part, to hair transplantation survey he underwent in the early 1990s). I went on to inquire why he has employed so many pseudonyms over his lengthy writing career, including Leigh Nichols. He said that it was a consequence of his being so prolific: too many books published under only his own name would likely have glutted the market. He went on to say that at one time, Nichols was actually outselling Koontz; but when Koontz finally outsold Nichols, he decided to come clean and republish those early novels under his own name. I mentioned to him my having met Stephen King, and noted that King had often produced work under the byline “Richard Bachman.” How funny, I mused, that these two worldwide bestsellers should both have published behind false identities.

Koontz was very gracious. I marveled when he asked me to whom he should sign my copy of The Husband, which had been placed in the LongPen device, beneath a mechanical pen that in turn sat just under the TV monitor. I told him to sign it to “Ali,” and just as I was about to spell that out for him, I saw Koontz look at my name badge through the video camera placed above the screen (it reminded me of the eye of HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey), and then the pen device swiggled out his words. Exactly as he was writing them in Newport Beach. Astounding technology! Once more glancing at my name badge, he asked me about The Rap Sheet, January Magazine, and the e-zine Shots, and then said he’d look them all up on the Web. It was an odd experience talking with Dean Koontz, with no time delay on the screen. We went on to chat a bit more, including about his 2005 novel, Velocity, which I so enjoyed--to the point where I’d made sure it was among the short list of contenders for the International Thriller Writers’ Best Novel Award in 2006. (It ultimately lost, though, to The Patriots Club, by Christopher Reich.)

By this time, an impatient line of people had started to form behind me. So I said my good-byes, and Koontz waved back, and I went off to thank Margaret Atwood for making my day. She smiled again and handed me more information about LongPen.

I must admit, the experience of meeting Dean Koontz and having 15 minutes of face time with him was fantastic. Atwood’s assistant was kind enough to take a few photographs of me with the author, and the booth operators laughed when I left, for all I could say was “That was mental, totally bloody mental, talking with Dean Koontz!”

I’ll have more to say about the London Book Fair later this week, as I have much to report about listening to authors John Banville and Christopher Priest discuss “Noir and the Nature of Evil”; meeting renowned U.S. critic-editor-bookseller Otto Penzler for the first time; and enjoying the Harrogate Crime Festival Cocktail Party. To get an impression of LBF for yourself, click here for an overview video.